Graphic designer jobs are among the most in-demand professions that have evolved drastically with time and age. Professionals in this area must design graphics to be used on various platforms. Graphic designers create visual impressions using computer software or by hand. The visuals communicate ideas that inspire, inform, and captivate consumers.
What makes an efficient designer & what do employers look for in a good technical skill?
There is something else in every designer that makes them creative heads. Graphic designers must be more than just talent or skill to form a visual art. To produce compelling visuals, graphic designers use sophisticated and straightforward graphical design equipment that capture their minds’ ever-shifting shapes and colours.
Categories of basic requirements of equipment for graphic designing:
- Hardware
- Software
Hardware equipment for graphic designing:
To stay agile and quickly adapt to whatever the situation calls for, you’ll find yourself using a wide range of graphic design tools and hardware. Have a look at them.
Pen and paper
The cheapest, quickest and easiest way to transfer design ideas from your head to the real world is pen & paper. Analogue sketches serve as a sacred link between the great graphic artists and the new tech-enabled designers of today.
Computer
For digital creatives, all the heavy lifting in the profession can be carried out with a computer. The latest iMac Pro is considered as the best by any standard having:
- a 16-GB graphics card, and
- 32-GB memory,
- a 27-inch 5K Retina Display,
- an 18-core processor for the high-end type.
Stylus And Graphics Tablet
Creatives with a dominant tech gene in their DNA will likely prefer the digital equivalent of pencil and paper for their sketching and sketching tasks. Do you find yourself craving a hybrid tool that allows you to continue making hand drawings like a classical artist? Don’t be embarrassed or feel that you are backstabbing the trade. Instead, search for state-of-the-art tools such as the
- industry-standard Wacom tablet/Pro Pen
- the versatile iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil.
Smartphone
A smartphone is also the easiest way for web designers to determine whether a specific web page design correctly renders on small screens. Graphic designers disagree on which smartphone model is the best for their profession. Still, you’ll find loud voices supporting either Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S phones as well as Apple’s latest iPhone iteration.
Color space reference
Never settle for counterfeit colors. For the uninitiated, a shade of color that resembles blue might as well be blue, but for design professionals, color accuracy and rendering precision matter big time. Having a color space reference is a must. The Pantone Matching System is known as the industry standard. You can invest in the Formula Guide depending on your client portfolio and design focus.
- for nearly 2000 spot colors,
- essential Color Bridge Set, or
- mini–Color Swatches
Monitor Calibrator
Another way to control runaway colours is to use monitor calibrators. These devices ensure that the colours you see on your screen will be exactly the same ones that come out in printed outputs.
- X-Rite and Datacolor are the most trusted monitor calibrator brands,
- ColorMunki Smile and Spyder5EXPRESS as the respective entry-level models.
Software equipment for graphic designing
Graphic Design Applications
This is the biggest and arguably most important part of a digital artist’s equipment stack. These software applications make the graphic designers create, edit, store, and manage with creative output whether installed on a desktop computer or offered as a cloud-based service:
- images,
- videos,
- photos,
- presentations,
- brochures, and
- other visual formats.
The Adobe Creative Cloud marks the prototype for this tool type, offering a full suite of applications for drawing and manipulating
- raster graphics (Photoshop),
- vector images (Illustrator),
- videos (After Effects, Premiere Pro), and
- different desktop publishing formats like posters, magazines, brochures, and eBooks (InDesign).
Paid options to specific applications in Adobe’s subscription service include
- Serif’s Affinity Designer (vector) and
- Affinity Photo (raster),
- CorelDRAW (vector), and
- the macOS-exclusive Sketch (vector).
Online Graphic Design Services
Many organizations offer web-based graphic design services that primarily target general consumers (non-professional/occasional designers) due to the advancement in cloud computing technology.
- Canva is a simple drag-and-drop online tool that allows anyone to quickly author, edit, and share images.
- Venngage is a template-based design tool that lets anyone build professional content like business presentations, white papers, reports, marketing materials and more.
The tool provides access to over 10,000 icons, thousands of stock photos, and tons of customizable charts and graphs.
Cloud Storage
Hard drive and portable storage are well and good. However, you still require a space in the cloud to synchronize, store, and manage your design assets, projects, and output. Cloud-storage help easily share and collaborate on design documents. It is accessible anytime and anywhere when you forget to bring your portable physical drive to work.
Art and technology can be joined in surprising ways to form practical, beneficial and beautiful things. The industry is constantly evolving for paving the path to more creative freedom and lucrative career opportunities.
Do I need to have professional experience before college?
A good Graphic Designer with a natural eye for styling and colour can design imaginative content that effectively resonates with the audience. This is what needed. Also, the expertise to use different designing tools to form beautiful work is a prerequisite that goes according to the customers’ needs.
Learning and practising those fundamental skills can prepare you well for degree programs and future careers. You can start doing freelance graphic design jobs to build their portfolio and skillset, irrespective of the category of degree you want to attain. As a student you can also partake in extracurricular activities that empower you to execute what you have learnt, like working for the yearbook or searching an after-school graphic design job.